The present invention relates to a sleeve for forced immersion of an article such as a fruit or a vegetable into a basin filled with water, the sleeve comprising a body defining an article travel passage and at least one inlet for a fluid for setting up an article drive stream.
Installations for grading and packaging fruit or vegetables are known. Such an installation comprises a conveyor for transporting fruits individually, each in its own cell. The conveyor passes through a station for evaluating the caliber of each fruit and then passes over a set of temporary storage basins, with each basin being assigned to fruits of a common caliber. Each fruit is ejected from the conveyor into the basin corresponding to its caliber.
Fruits having the same caliber are stored temporarily in a basin and are subsequently conveyed by a collector channel to a container-filling unit. Such containers are formed by rectangular cases having open top faces. The content of such a container is approximately 1 cubic meter (m3) and such containers are sometimes referred to by the name “palox”. The walls of such containers are perforated.
In the filling station, the containers are immersed in a basin full of water and the fruits floating on the surface of the basin are immersed inside the container under the action of a flow of water established in the basin.
More precisely, while immersed in the basin of the filling station, the container is covered by a cover having a loading opening. This opening is fitted with a chute for guiding fruits into the inside of the container. The chute generally defines a bend having an open end disposed facing the loading opening in the cover and an opposite end defining a fruit inlet, said inlet extending in a generally vertical plane. The top end of the inlet of the chute is situated above the surface of the water in the basin in which the container is immersed.
In order to ensure that articles are immersed, a very fast flow of water is established between the top portion of the basin and its bottom portion. For this purpose, a pump delivering a flow of about 600 cubic meters per hour (m3/h) has its inlet connected to the vicinity of the bottom of the basin. The outlet from the pump is connected, for example, to the upstream ends of the temporary fruit-storage basins that are provided at the outlet from the conveyor.
The water stream established by the pump circulates from the temporary storage basins to the container-filling basin, flowing along the length of the collector channel. This stream causes fruit to be displaced towards the chute.
The water which is sucked into the bottom of the basin and which circulates through the perforated container sets up stream to drive fruits through the chute.
The fruits entrained in this way by the stream are caused to pass through the chute and through the cover. They are then retained inside the container by the cover.
It will be understood that such an installation for immersing fruits requires a pump to be used that has a very high delivery rate.